


Bahrain

by icedteainthebag



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-15
Updated: 2011-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:11:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedteainthebag/pseuds/icedteainthebag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carrie meets Lynne in Bahrain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bahrain

**Author's Note:**

> My first Homeland fanfic. This series begs to be written about and I couldn't resist. Check out the series on Showtime if you haven't already. I say don't read this unless you've watched it. Just watch it. (Any way you can.) Thanks to aka_plynn for the quick beta.

Every child in America wants to be a spy.

Carrie used to watch them play their games—when she used to go outside—the bite of the cold October wind numbing the side of her cheek and sending curled, dried leaves skittering along black asphalt cracked with age. The playground down her street is where they would often gather, one child and then another, a pick-up game of mystery and intrigue, of action and consequence, of feigned life and death.

It was invigorating seeing their enthusiasm, their passion unbridled as they hid from each other, took prisoners, made guns out of chubby pointer fingers and thumbs. They sneaked around corners, their backs to painted metal poles. Sometimes they would fall dead; they would die in different ways. Some were dramatic, imaginary ammunition propelling them backward as they clutched their chests and gasped for air. Others fell silently and waited for a tap on the shoulder. Game over.

She had wanted to be a spy, a child prone to dramatic rescues, not dramatic falls. She never died in these scenarios—when she got shot she would deny it, argue she hadn’t been shot, that the shooter had missed and had hit something or somebody else. She was relentless until the shooter backed down, eyes shifting away in reluctant acceptance.

She was invincible then.

-

Lynne’s contact was entirely unexpected and made her heart palpitate, adrenaline-induced flutters spreading through her chest and stomach though she couldn’t tell what emotion was heading the rush. Excitement, anxiety, worry, anxiety. If she was calling to try and get out of her contract, Carrie was going to kick her ass.

No, no, she wouldn’t. She would calmly explain to her the legally binding terms of her contract while instilling in her a sense of duty and patriotism.

Niceties aside, Lynne is literally Uncle Sam’s whore.

She grabs a stick of gum, fallen loose from its pack, and unwraps it slowly as she leans into the monitors in front of her. Her eyes flit to each camera view, searching for clues, searching for anything. She’s stared at these angles so long she can see them when she closes her eyes, has dreams about shadows moving through them. Fucking Brody and his twitchy fingers and his PTSD, that was all she had so far.

She rolls her head one way until her ear hits her shoulder, and then the other way, her neck stiff and straining to stretch.

She needs to exercise more. She hasn’t been out in days, hasn’t gone to the gym in weeks. She’s soft now, can feel it in her belly, her only exercise lately done in the backseats of cars or...

She slips the gum in her mouth and chews, hungrily, as she leans closer to the monitors, watching Brody sleep. At least he isn’t attacking his wife tonight.

Yet.

She blows a bubble and it pops.

-

 _Two years earlier_

Carrie had been desperate for a way back in, for a way to repay her debts. She obsessed about it, dreamed about it. She’d learned to live her life sans regrets because life was moving far too quickly to mull over mistakes, but this one—getting caught in Iraq—was her brick wall. Personally, professionally. The fact that Saul had to painstakingly work for her release meant she owed him something, something big.

Counterterrorism was a downgrade but at that point she was a scavenger, hungry for scraps to piece together a meal. Anything would do but the subsistence was often meager at best.

Intelligence and patience walk hand in hand but she and patience hadn’t developed such a close acquaintance.

Suddenly, there was Bahrain. Prince Farid. Lynne Reed. Everything dropped into place so perfectly that she’d thought it had to be a trap, baited with exactly what she’d been hungry for, what the entire agency had a hard-on for.

It could be their in and Carrie couldn’t pass it up.

It was convenient that Reed was American; convenient and so unlike the Saudis’ patterns of the past. Word was that Farid liked to fuck blondes, natural blondes, and apparently the women of Scandinavia were not to his liking.

His last, Finnish, escort had mysteriously disappeared after only two months.

Whatever the reasoning behind his selection, Carrie couldn’t give a shit. The seedy world of escorts was one she had to ignore as best she could, as it’d run in the foreground of every political operation she’d been involved in, probably even in the history of mankind. She couldn’t judge a woman for selling her body to provide for herself if that same woman was going to sell it as a CIA asset.

The idea of having an American so close to such a high-profile player made Carrie’s blood run hot with possibilities. Lynne could be pivotal for them. The previously impenetrable Saudi royal family now had a chink in its chain mail and Carrie was going to be the one to exploit it.

She could prove herself with this one. She’d make it happen.

They made arrangements to meet in Zallaq at the Sofitel, which boasted one of the most brilliant spas Carrie had ever seen. She could see it already: the look on Este’s face when he went over her expense report and saw the line item for her thalassotherapy treatment.

Too fucking bad. She was taking this one for the team.

She elected for the seawater shower after her massage, which, as elegant as it sounded, stung her eyes like a bitch. She dried off and headed for the sauna. Spas in the United States always provided robes and she’d noticed abroad it was generally accepted not to wear one. Spas were great rendezvous points in that way—women were so reluctant to look at each other naked that they rarely picked up details of those around them.

She slipped into the sea fog sauna, steam enveloping her, giving her cover as she waited for Lynne. They’d booked concurrent appointments, Carrie assuming her usual identity.

-

Carrie waited for what seemed like hours, the heat of the sauna sending her into a rare state of Zen. She felt herself unraveling, her eyes achingly dry behind their lids. Tired. She was so goddamned tired.

The sauna door opened and closed and she was immediately on alert, switched on like she hadn’t been nodding off. Carrie saw the woman's slight form and knew it to be Reed from surveillance photos she'd seen. Steam began to generate again to refill the empty spaces, a gentle hiss that temporarily masked Reed's nudity as she walked toward Carrie, folding a towel, her chin tilted downward. Reed perched herself upon the towel a considerate distance away from her, yet close enough that Carrie could make out the thin lines of her bare arm and thigh.

"Bahrain's beautiful this time of year," Carrie said, her pulse quickening as it always did when she met with an asset for the first time.

"I love visiting the Pearl Monument at sunset, a half hour before twilight," the woman replied, her voice wavering slightly.

Confirmation.

"It's good to finally meet you, Lynne." She kept her tone low and moved closer to the woman beside her. She needed to be close enough to look into her eyes and also see if she was wired.

Reed turned her face and they truly saw each other for the first time. Carrie knew immediately why Farid had chosen her; the woman was beautiful, with delicate features and doe eyes. Her presence was strong in the room; she commanded attention, exactly what Farid would want in a girl. She was attractive, not only in the physical sense but in a deeper one.

Such confidence can lure even the most powerful men in, and when lured, they were at their weakest. This Carrie knew quite well.

Reed was unable to hide the uncertainty she was feeling about the situation with the tilt of her head and inquisitive gaze. Carrie gave her a reassuring smile, one she'd practiced so often when she saw inherent fear gripping an asset. Sometimes it didn’t work. But they couldn't lose Reed, not to an emotion as surmountable as fear.

"I'm not wired either," Carrie said. "It's just you and me, Lynne. Let's talk about what you're going to do."

"What I might do." Reed's voice steadied as she gained confidence in her fleeting upper hand.

Carrie nodded. She didn't know how much time they had before someone walked in on them, so she continued in rapid fire, describing the operation, why they needed her, why Farid was important. How it would be so easy for Reed to be the eyes and ears of this op; how she'd have the entire counterterrorism unit behind her if anything were to happen.

Three years was the contract. The unit knew Farid would either keep her that long or kill her by then. Have her killed. Whatever he did to rid himself of those he no longer desired to possess.

Carrie didn't detail his tendencies to Reed. It wasn't in her best interest to do so.

"This… what you're about to do, Lynne… you're serving your country. Maybe you're not in uniform or getting a medal pinned to your chest, but you know, it's much more than that. You're doing what they can't do. You're going where they can't go. You’re a patriot in every sense of the word."

Reed nodded, shifting on the bench. Her arm grazed Carrie's and Reed leaned in closer.

"You won't let anything happen to me."

The meeting had heightened Carrie's senses, all of them, and she forced any unprofessional thoughts about this woman and the titillating feeling of being so close to scoring an asset aside, even as her lips were inches away. "Never. Full protection. You'll be working for us, protected by us."

The hiss of steam broke the moment and Reed pulled away. "Okay, Carrie."

Carrie waited a moment. “Are you sure you’re in?” It was the question she never wanted to ask but felt obliged to do so. There were no take backs.

“Yes. I’ll do it. I just don’t know... I don’t know how to start it.”

Carrie lost her breath, exhilarated, then steadied herself. "You act normal. Nothing’s different. You see anything suspicious, you contact me through the same channels we did this time. Try to get it on tape—audio’s great, video’s better. Try to get faces. Take in all the details you can.”

“I’m pretty sure you got years of training to learn how to do this stuff.” Reed sighed, her head bowed to her lap. “You’ve given me thirty seconds.”

Carrie shook her head, reaching over to touch the woman’s thigh. She quickly pulled her hand away, remembering where they were, and placed it on Reed’s warm, damp shoulder instead. “Just use your eyes and your head. That’s it. You can do this.”

“Okay.”

“You can _do_ this, Lynne.”

“All right, Carrie. Jesus Christ.” Lynne shrugged her hand away, any intimacy lost.

“Good,” Carrie said. “When we leave, the contra—"

The door opened and Carrie's body went rigid. She studied the form of the person who entered the sauna and approached them. The patron sat down on the far side of the sauna and Carrie stood up, pulling her towel off the bench. She didn't look back at Reed. She was done.

Samuels would seal the deal she just made with the contract, that fucking paper shuffler.

The full wave of euphoria at her score didn't hit right away. She felt its inception in the sauna, felt it slowly building as she talked to Lynne and beginning to hit its crest as she grabbed her bag full of clothes at her locker. Part of her relished the rush. Part of her despised it, despised its unpredictability and the way it made her emotions surge. The best part about the lows was always this high, this indescribable jolt of energy that was sometimes destructive. Sometimes she let it be.

This time it wasn't. This time she had won. This was the game changer; Lynne Reed was going to change her life for the better. Maybe not now, maybe not in a year, but she was going to change it.

Yanking the bag open, Carrie dug past the light beige pantsuit she'd worn in, past her sweats she always packed to sleep in, to the dark bottom of the bag. She pulled out a black dress and held it in her shaking hand just as another wave rushed over her, quickening her breath and making her desperate to feel more. She could get higher than this. It was seemingly impossible but she wasn't one to limit herself.

This hotel had to have a bar.

She slipped on the black dress, the black heels. She left off her underwear.

She was in fucking Bahrain and nobody would know.

-

It was easy enough to find a young businessman at the bar, liquored up on the company's dollar, looking for a similar someone. Broad shouldered, dark haired, he fit her M.O. perfectly and even better, he didn't know who she was or that she hadn't been drinking. She didn't have to use alcohol this time; she was already wired, ready to go. She walked up to him, asking in Arabic where he was from. He answered in English, an Australian accent, and she leaned into him, making sure he saw down the front of her dress.

She had this down to a science. A fucking art form.

"I need some assistance," she murmured. "In my room."

She used to feel danger when she approached anonymous men like this. She used to get nervous. Now she got more aroused and the rise was addicting. But she never felt powerful because the power wasn't hers; it belonged somewhere inside her head. It came out when she least expected it, like it breathed and acted on its own and she was just its conduit. Analyzing that was a dark fucking road she didn't feel like going down.

"And how much will that cost?" he replied just as softly, his gaze finally drifting back up from her breasts.

She burst out in laughter and disbelief. "I'm not for sale. Trust me."

He nodded, then stood up and grabbed his coat from the back of the chair. She let him follow her, not looking back until she was at the elevator, waiting for the car. She turned to him and smiled, her body thrumming with the possibility of what would follow in mere minutes.

It could be sooner.

"Will you fuck me in the elevator?"

He looked to the side and settled his blue eyes on hers. "Only if we're alone."

The bell announced the car's arrival and the doors opened to empty space.

"What luck," Carrie said, walking in and placing her hands on the bar at the back, turned away from him. She slid her hands along the cool metal and felt the elevator gently dip as he stepped on. Her hands tightened around the bar when he pushed his body against her back, her dress shifting upward. One of his hands clutched her ass and she moaned, closing her eyes as he fumbled with his zipper.

“Make it hard,” she whispered. Or maybe it was all in her head.

Nobody would know.

-

 _Your job is to control your asset._

She watches Lynne walk away, their hands both clutching identical compacts. Then she looks in the mirror, remnants of Bahrain scattered through her head and connecting like a puzzle. All that had finally, ultimately, led to this moment. She'd worked Lynne for two years, reassuring her, propping her up.

Lying to her.

Reed is dispensable, when it comes right down to it. America had pimped her out, knowing it had plenty of others to replace her if things went awry. Carrie hates this fact more than she hates herself for a brief instant. She hates herself for getting her asset into a situation where forty-five seconds could determine whether she lives or dies.

But maybe Reed should have expected this. She agreed to get in over her head.

Abu Nazir was so close she could practically smell the son of a bitch. This was how Carrie could lie to her asset, how she could put her in grave danger of dying a painful and dishonorable death. She needs this—to prove to Saul she was right, to prove to everyone she isn’t a goddamned lunatic, to prevent another act of terrorism, to stop Brody in his fucking tracks.

She'd do anything for it.

Maybe she’s the whore.


End file.
